This blog has been a place of storytelling. Sometimes I forget how powerful an act that is. Last blog, I wrote of wildfires. On the heels of posting, I found myself evacuating my home as a wall of smoke devoured it. Luckily, only smoke but the fire had been a block away. The winds are fierce in this area. Truly, an ideal location for the commercial windmills that continue to appear on the horizon.
So the winds serve as fuel but they also serve to fuel the stealth embers that pop up anywhere from an irrigation motor in a wheat field to the spark that flies between a Santa Fe freight wheel and the old train track. Needless to say, I prayed and engaged in a great deal of meditation while distracting the children. The act of praying involves more of a request for shifting winds as praying for the calming of them I liken to the parting of the Red Sea. But there are those that act like Moses. And I wonder who's faith is stronger: Me praying in a safe space or the man covered in soot with his water hose and Bud Light hitting hot spots as they fly into his backyard. Most would question his sanity. I'll say he's a man of faith -- the fire took out his backyard but he saved his home which sits a block behind mine so I will say he saved mine, too -- giving me the privilege of only questioning his choice of beverage (but if he wants a case of it, he's got it).
Not aware of his heroic act, I pulled away from the house completely at peace knowing all that was important in my world was snapping their seat belts into place. But, we were missing one cat. I had spent a few seconds looking for him. Later, after having secured a hotel room, I thought of him and it dawned on me that he probably wasn't even in the house. So, I created him as our keeper of the gate and when we returned he was ecstatic to see us...and a little freaked out.
Even as I write, a fire rages outside of town. It's several miles away but the sky, that meets the flat lands here, serves as a canvas which is filling with hues so stark in contrast to billowy white clouds and light lapis found in between that it could be mistaken for a severe thunderstorm -- prompting me to pray for rain. So, that is the story I'm telling and it ends with a nice little rhyme:
White round clouds
in a silver frame.
Leaves dancing
to the ground.
Soft winds sing
through a window screen
of rains soon tumbling down.